From: Patrick van den Berg (cirandar@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 13:38:59 GMT
--- The Pantophobic <trivik@stwing.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> you did not answer the question:
> Say you bump into an alien. how would you decide wheather s/he is
> concious or
> mearly programmed to behave as such
I was talking about turing machines and you are talking about the turing
test... okay then. Have you heard of Searle's Chinese Room
thought-experiment? I don't feel like explaining it now, so here's al
link:
http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/c/chineser.htm#The%20Chinese%20Room%20Thought%20Experiment
Jee, in glancing the discussions on the web, I found that most people
are very eager to refute his argument against artificial computer
consciousness. I forget that sometimes, that maybe I have an opinion
that's in minority. No, on second thought, I think most sensible people
who sit all day behind their computers for work don't think that WORD
tries to frustrate them on purpose ;-) when yet another automatic
function which is hard to switch of hinders them. only people having
their carreers in AI don't like to hear that all their efforts are quite
intelligent, but that they can't create consciousness.
Well, nobody seems to like or seems interested in the questions I pose
next, but here they are: how do you know that a person in your dream
isn't self-aware? OR how do you know that people in a
near-death-experience really don't meet a Jesus that is aware of
his-self, and not just a product of their imagination? That is a
controversial issue in any (serious) research concerning the 'reality'
of these NDE's.
To answer your question: I think that when I deal with the alien long
enough, I will intuit or feel eventually with a considerable certainty
whether the alien is a robot or is a sentient being. Rationally it might
be hard to say WHY I intuit this, however. Of course, this argument is
by far not conclusive, I know.
Suggestions for further reading: The mind matters, David hodgson, and
Roger Penrose's New Emperor's mind. The first author is largely ignored
in the scientific literature, mr. Penrose has some great deal of
popularity, but nevertheless his oponents are more multiple. Penrose is
a very clever man, he's educated in exact science and has contributed a
lot to different fields of mathematics and theoretical physics. Also he
wrote more than 700 pages arguing that Turing machines can't be
sentient. Still most people, or most scientists I should perhaps say
don't buy his arguments. So who am I to convince you?
(there might be quite some people who aren't educated much in science
but read his books, are convinced by Penrose. But you don't hear much
from these 'ordinary' (and sensible, in my opinion) people).
GReetings, Patrick.
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